scandal

It appears that House Ethics Committee Chair Doc Hastings (R-WA) is starting to feel the heat after weeks of sustained pressure by his frustrated constituents, Public Campaign Action Fund, and Washingtonians for a Cleaner Congress.

Sound like a bad joke? Welcome to the wonderful world of superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. Yesterday, during a Senate hearing looking into Abramoff's lobbying practices with American Indian tribes, Sen. McCain and Sen. Dorgan explored two issues: Abranoff's request to a rabbi for a phony award and the creation of an “international think tank.”

I just wanted to put up a quick post this morning -- we're in staff meetings and are a little tied up for the next few days. But even as we meet to discuss next steps in our campaign to hold DeLay accountable and clean up Congress, scandals involving our elected officials aren't subsiding.

A group of Yakima, Washington residents sent a letter yesterday asking their Congressman, House Ethics Committee Chair Doc Hastings, to do the right thing and appoint an outside counsel to look into the scandals surrounding Tom DeLay.

Tom DeLay (R-TX) has hired another lawyer to defend him as an ethics committee investigation looms. Bennett Roth and Michael Hedges of the Houston Chronicle report that DeLay has enlisted Richard Cullen, a former state attorney general in Virginia who served as chief counsel to former Sen. Paul Trible, R-Va., when the lawmaker was a member of the House-Senate select committee looking into the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.